AFL still has to give us some answers over Essendon supplement saga

THE Essendon supplement saga has risen again like the world’s most persistent zombie and, like it or not, the AFL has questions to answer, writes Rita Panahi.

Former AFL chief Andrew Demetriou. Picture: Nicole Garmston

JUST about every individual and organisation associated with the protracted Essendon doping saga has paid a steep price for their involvement.

Everyone, that is, except the Australian Football League, including current chief executive Gill McLachlan and his predecessor, Andrew Demetriou.

What they did behind closed doors has been the subject of conjecture, but now there is a renewed push for a Senate inquiry into the conduct of the AFL and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.

Late last week, the Herald Sun revealed details of a secret tape recording of a crisis meeting at Windy Hill held days before the club and four of its officials were fined and charged by the AFL.

The tape provides an extraordinary insight into the mindset of former Bombers coach James Hird, senior assistant Mark Thompson, chairman Paul Little and football manager Danny Corcoran as they discuss how to manage the fallout from the club’s foray into a “pharmaceutically experimental environment”. It’s remarkable that evidence of such a meeting can be produced years after the event, but the club can’t to this day explain precisely what substances the players were given and how often.

It’s also seems remarkable that the AFL was discussing proposed penalties with the Essendon chairman before the club, along with Hird, Thompson, Corcoran and club doctor Bruce Reid, were charged. It seems a bizarre way of conducting an inquiry: discuss penalties before laying charges or establishing guilt. We are meant to believe that the AFL Commission hearing on August 26 and 27, 2013 — two weeks after the taped meeting — was unaffected by the wheeling and dealing.

The Essendon drug scandal has caused significant damage to the game’s image and destroyed friendships, careers and reputations.

It is clear that some of those who’ve paid a heavy price for their complicity, or at best naivety, in a reckless drugs program feel hard done by and are seeking redress.

Politicians, too, are calling for an investigation. Labor senator Kimberley Kitching and Greens leader Richard Di Natale are pushing for an inquiry while federal Sports Minister Greg Hunt examines new information.

Present AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan. Picture: Sarah Matray

However, it’s a mistake to lump ASADA in with the AFL.

ASADA certainly made mistakes under former CEO Aurora Andruska, but when Ben McDevitt took over a fractured, and some would say compromised, investigation in May 2014, he made sure that there were no more backroom deals and that the case would be prosecuted without fear or favour.

Both Essendon and the AFL did everything possible to “save” the players from prosecution — but the fact remains that as professional athletes, they were ultimately responsible for what they allowed to be injected into their bodies.

McDevitt was unequivocal from the start: “What happened at Essendon was far worse than poor governance … we know that hundreds, if not thousands, of injections were given to Essendon players during the course of 2012.

“The absolutely deplorable and disgraceful lack of records of these injections means we still have young men not knowing what was injected into them.”

McDEVITT, who will leave ASADA this May, has been unfairly maligned by AFL fanboys for simply doing his job and doing it well.

Those desperate to absolve the players of all culpability are prepared to viciously attack anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their one-eyed view of their heroes.

Despite the best efforts of the AFL, the AFL Player’s Association and Essendon, the players were found guilty of doping by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. After the ruling, McDevitt condemned the players for their part in the “culture of secrecy and concealment”.

“This unfortunate episode has chronicled the most devastating self-inflicted injury by a sporting club in Australian history,” he said.

“This was a secret program and the players were not just innocent bystanders ... Of 30 ASADA testing missions during the period in question, none of the 18 players tested declared the injections, despite being asked each time whether they had taken any supplements.”

The Essendon 34 have been punished for their part in the doping program, along with most officials.

The Essendon drug scandal has caused significant damage to the game’s image.

But the AFL has never been held to account for its conduct, nor is it likely to be, given the way the commission and the executive operate.

From the very start, the image-obsessed league attempted to engineer an outcome by strongarming the anti-doping body and behaving duplicitously throughout the controversy.

The AFL’s penchant for secrecy and brand protection has been laid bare. No amount of strategic leaking to journalists is going to mask the fact that the organisation responsible for running our most loved footy code attempted to manipulate the process.

As much as most footy fans want to put the Essendon catastrophe behind them and focus on the coming season, lingering questions remain.

Sadly, many of the clubs that are meant to keep the league accountable are beholden to it for handouts, also known as “equalisation measures”, without which some of them would be insolvent.

It is almost 1500 days since Essendon “self-reported” to ASADA and the AFL, and yet after multiple investigations there is much we do not know.

We may never learn what happened at the club, but every effort should be made to reveal what role the AFL and its officers played in the most damaging episode in football history.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

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